Dear Vladimir Ilyich!

In one of our conversations you reproached me for the fact that we still do not have a good monument to K. Marx in Moscow...

I agree that it is necessary to proceed with the construction of a monument to Marx in Moscow. I know that in the first competition, grandiose projects were submitted involving the reconstruction of entire squares. Of course, it is out of the question to think of that now, and the matter can only concern a beautiful, meaningful, monumental figure of Marx in one of the squares.

... In Moscow there is a sculptor quite suitable for a sole commission of a statue of Marx. This is the author of the excellent granite monument to Dostoevsky on Tsvetnoj Boulevard, already erected by the Moscow Soviet—the artist Merkurov...

Comrade Kamenev! Give your conclusion in writing or by telephone 97.

1919

Written December 24 or 25

First published in 1945

in Lenin Miscellany XXXV

Printed from the manuscript